


What Is And What Isn't

by orphan_account



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M, Fluff, I was just really bored, Just Get Married Already, So Bear With me, also maya really likes art, and my fiery daughter, and shes just really cute, basically lucas pretending he doesnt like maya, because why not, cute oblivious babies, even though he does, i dont know why i wrote this, lucas being a puppy, lucaya - Freeform, my smol son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6355690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nose to nose, breath tickling Lucas’ cheek, Maya says, “You don’t plan a blanket fort, young Huckleberry. You let the spirit of the blanket move through you.”</p><p>Lucas feels his stomach flip. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” </p><p>(or - in which Lucas is still very very oblivious)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is And What Isn't

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first ever girl meets world fic. i wrote it months ago and just stumbled upon it again and whoops - here we are.
> 
> basically just me enjoying torturing my babies with the denial of their feelings. enjoy.

It’s not every day Lucas finds himself in Maya Hart’s house. As a matter of fact, it happens so rarely that Lucas finds himself feeling overexposed and intruding as he follows the girl into her room. It’s like he’s breaking some sort of rule, the code that they will both keep up carefully fabricated walls around each other. She’s the teasing, always-spitting-fire one, and he’s the, for lack of a better word, Moral Compass.

And he hates that her nicknames are even in his subconscious, but it’s his subconscious, so there’s not much he can do about that one.

“Make yourself at home, Huckleberry,” Maya says. With two quick kicks, her shoes go flying across the room, landing in a cluttered pile of other shoes he assumes were discarded in the same violent manner. Her walls are this faded teal color, except for one, that’s an off-white cream and covered in magazine cut-outs, drawings, and words. Her bed isn’t made – that doesn’t surprise him – and there’s paintbrushes and perfume bottles and tampons scattered all around her room, but Lucas finds that everything feels oddly organized.

Controlled chaos, like the girl herself. 

He must’ve been staring for too long, (but really, his mom always says you can figure out so much about a person by their room, and Lucas may not admit it but he wants to know Maya more, always more), because Maya snorts and he feels a hot blush creep up his neck.

“Everything alright?” she says, and there’s the edge of a laugh in her voice.

He nods quickly, swallowing down his embarrassment. “Yeah. Fine. Better than fine. Great.”

Maya rolls her eyes, and then gestures to the tampons in the corner. “If it’s those that are bothering you, well then, you’re out of luck. Because they’re not moving.”

And then he’s shaking his head just as quickly, so fast he’s sure it’ll hurt in the morning. “No, no, that’s not a problem at all.”

That answer seems to be the right one, because she smiles almost smugly as she drops her book sack on the floor. “Good. Now, you ready to start this shit?”

This shit, of course, is referring to the history project Cory assigned them. They have to research the story of any notable figure of America’s history and present said story as a brief skit to the class. Which Lucas probably would’ve felt was ‘out of his comfort zone’ at one point, but it’s Cory, so he doesn’t really mind.  
Maya plops down on her floor, so Lucas follows suit. “Have we decided on a person yet?” he asks once Maya pulls out the instructions. She has a pencil in between her teeth, and he sees the small indentions left in the grooves of wood. She talks around it, making the words come out a bit wrong.

“I was thinking Amelia Earhart, because she was fucking awesome, and if not her then I’d say Edward Hopper.”

“And what if I had no idea who this Hopper guy is?”

Maya blinks once, then twice, then her nose scrunches up. “No idea at all? He’s only, like, one of the most influential realist artists of America’s history.”

“Oh,” Lucas says, like that clears it up. 

“Have you ever seen that painting of the woman sitting on her bed, looking out a window?”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“It’s like – never mind. What about, um, this one with a woman sitting in a restaurant? And it’s just her, at this little café sorta table, and through the glass of this window behind her all you see is darkness, except for this trail of bright lamps, like the ongoing reflection in mirrors when they’re back to back, you know? His shading, and color blending for that matter, are both so nice in that one – I’d say he was one of the most stark realist painters ever, if I was being honest. He portrays lots of isolation in his work too, as if this realism is meant only to highlight humanity’s inner loneliness, our craving for someone other than ourselves.”

She says it all almost in one breath, but Lucas hardly registers her words, because he’s too busy watching her eyes light up as she talks, looking at him but also past him, like she could make the painting appear if she tried hard enough. Somewhere through the talk her hand made it to his knee, and she’s tapping it insistently, like if he doesn’t understand what she’s saying he might as well waste away the rest of his life. 

There’s a little windswept curl beside her ear where it was pulled out of her braid, and her mascara has smudged a bit, resting in the crease of her eyelid so that, when she blinks, there’s this little line of black.

When she finishes, she looks slightly breathless. He feels his lips raise into a smirk, but instead of blushing, she narrows her eyes in a challenge.

“You got something to say?”

Lucas’ smile grows, and he laughs a bit. “No, not at all. Actually, I’m kind of disappointed that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She looks proud of herself as she tucks that stray curl behind her ear. “Well, you’re welcome then. It would seem I can culture out that hillbilly streak in you after all.”

“Ha," he says in his least amused voice. It only makes her lips twitch in a smirk.

“Now which one is it gonna be?”

Lucas doesn’t mind that he hasn’t even suggested anyone, instead settling for the obvious answer. “I say Eddy’s our man.”

Maya raises an eyebrow, but lets out this little laugh, one Lucas is sure he can get used to hearing. “I honestly think I would be so offended if I were him and heard you call me Eddy.”

“Then he’s probably turning in his grave right now.”

“You think he’d mind walking over to John Quincy Adams for a quick show-and-tell Monday then?”

Lucas rolls his eyes. “I’ll ask him tonight if you do the rest of the project.”

Maya grins, and punches him in the shoulder. “Nice try, Ranger Rick, but you’re helping me with this, whether or not you give a fuck about Edward and his-“  
“Highly influential realist paintings?”

Maya pauses, and then her grin reaches a bit further. Her eyes light up again, except this time they’re not looking past Lucas at all, rather fixed right on his face, and he thinks having all that light shining on one person could be dangerous. Again, he’s hit with that weird feeling of intrusion. Maya, in her natural habitat, surrounded by piles of socks and parchment paper, pencil slanting out the side of her mouth, giving him a full, no-bullshit grin.

He doesn’t deserve this – and yet, he wonders, when did it start becoming something he felt unworthy of? 

He brushes off the feelings, because this is history, not some sappy Shakespeare play, and Maya is his friend, not some sappy Juliet to his Romeo, and that’s that. 

“Color me impressed, Lucas Friar. You may be a worthy art-padawan after all.”

He laughs. “I don’t remember signing up for that, so I might have to politely decline…”

She throws a pillow at him, but he swats it away. She pretends not to notice though, giving him a sharp look instead. Then, she takes the pencil out of her mouth, tapping it against the piece of loose-leaf she’s pulled out.

“Now, where to begin?”

They suck out any energy left in their poor, high school abused brains in the next two hours. Maya jots down ideas and quick facts, important dates in Edward’s life, and Lucas looks up his biography to fill in the facts she doesn’t know because, as much as Maya would like to think otherwise, she is not all-knowing when it comes to fancy art people.

The loose-leaf is covered in doodles and drawings where Maya was waiting to write something down and Lucas was looking up facts – sketched eyes and lips, a hand dripping with water, sun flitting through leaves. Lucas can’t help but think that if these are just absent-minded doodles, than Edward might want to step up his game a bit.

It’s five-thirty when they stop for a snack break. It’s neither of their ideas – Maya seems way too engrossed in this to even suggest a break, and as much as Lucas would like to tease her for actually enjoying and putting effort into schoolwork, he’s too scared to break what feels like a very rare, very sacred, very not-likely-to-ever-happen-in-front-of-him-again moment. Instead, it’s Katy – who Lucas would never just call Katy, but she insists he does so and apparently, it’s the “New York way” – who brings up a tray of Ritz crackers, grapes, and her homemade oatmeal cookies that he has heard Maya swear by before.

“Thank you, Katy,” he says. She winks at him, ruffling his hair as she passes by.

“And here I was, thinking you were a lost cause,” she jokes, and her smile looks a bit like her daughter’s. She walks back out, and as Lucas abandons his laptop for a handful of crackers, Maya cracks her neck and rolls her shoulders.

“Sitting hurts,” she complains.

“What a hard life you live,” he returns. She picks up a grape and throws it at his face, and when it bounces off to the floor he just picks it up and plops it into his mouth.

“You unsanitary swine.”

“Hey, that wasn't necessary now was it, little lady?”

She shoots him a glare, reaching for the cookies, and the plate is empty in five minutes. They sit there, insulting each other meaninglessly because they’re tired and the routine is too easy, and then Lucas checks his watch. It’s six. They need to finish this project.

“Ok, back to work.”

Maya groans, irritated. “I don’t wanna.”

“Aw, but I thought you loved art!” he says, tugging at the curl that’s fallen in front of her face. She slaps his hand away.

“Just because I love it doesn’t mean I want to do it all the time.”

He snorts. “Some love that is.”

“Really? Then why aren’t you sheep-riding right now?”

He snorts. “Ok, for the record, I don’t actually enjoy sheep-riding, we’ve been through this.”

“Puh-lease. That’s just a cover up for your poor man pride.”

“My man-pride isn’t-“

“Bah.”

“If that’s supposed to be a sheep it’s-“

“Baaaaaaah.”

“Oh my god you are literally the most immature person I’ve ever met.”

She stands then, all of a sudden, flicking him off and walking out of the room. Lucas is worried for about 2.5 seconds that he’s actually offended her, and then he remembers that it’s Maya and she’s made of tougher stuff then that. Before he has the chance to actually wonder what she is doing, she returns with a pile of blanket in her arms. They drag on the ground, because she’s Maya and barely five feet.

He blinks, and feels his eyebrows lower over his eyes. “Blankets?”

“I’m tired. And I can’t concentrate just sitting here with all these distractions around me. So we’re gonna build a blanket fort.”

And then he blinks again, and where his eyebrows were low they shoot straight up. “A what?”

“What, there was no such thing as blanket forts in Texas?”

“Oh no, there were blanket forts, but like, for two year olds, not for sixteen year olds.”

She rolls her eyes. “I think you’re just embarrassed because you don’t know how to make one.”

He scoffs. “Of course I know how to make a blanket fort!”

“Then prove it.”

It is six-o-three now, and he doesn’t have time for this.

“Maya, can we just-“

She hits him in the face with one of the smaller blankets, and when he goes to finish his sentence, she just hits him again. He opens her mouth, and she pulls back her arm, ready to strike, so he raises his hands in surrender. “Ok, ok. Blanket fort, got it.”

He stands up beside her, and takes a few steps back from the center of the room. He could hang a blanket from the top of her dresser probably, and use the heavy-looking clock to hold down the corner. And the other end of that blanket could stretch to… maybe the bedpost? “Here, let me just think about how we’re going to set this up,” he begins, already looking to see which blanket is longest. If he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it right. He reaches out for a spare piece of paper, because he needs to draw this out and make sure they’ll have enough blankets and-

“No.”

Beat.

“What?”

“There will be no planning – that ruins the whole spur-of-the-moment, I’m-building-a-fucking-blanket-fort feeling.” She says it matter-of-factly, like it’s painfully obvious and Lucas really is that uncultured.

“Yeah, and you know what that feeling ruins?” he says after a moment. “The actual blanket fort. We need stability if we’re gonna do this. I’m thinking we take that red one-“

“I’m thinking you stop thinking and follow my lead.”

“Maya, I am not taking an hour to build this thing because you just throw blankets around and they keep falling on us.”

“You questioning my ability to build a blanket fort, Hopalong?”

It reminds him painfully of that moment in 7th grade, her face painted in stripes and a bandanna wrapped around his forehead. Even more so when she grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him in – her fingers wrap around the blue tee, melding into the fabric, and her eyes are as challenging and bright as they were those three years ago.

“I’m not questioning anything, I’m just saying we need a bit of a plan before we do this,” he says, and he feels how tense he is under his shirt, feels the contraction of every muscle because if he moves, he’s not sure what will happen next. Maya either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because she pulls him even closer.

Nose to nose, breath tickling Lucas’ cheek, Maya says, “You don’t plan a blanket fort, young Huckleberry. You let the spirit of the blanket move through you.”  
Lucas feels his stomach flip. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

They stay like that for a moment, and Maya’s shorter than him but somehow still has every part of him coiled up like a spring, ready to bolt, or lean forward – he’s not sure. Before he’s ready, another second passes, and the same hand that pulled him in is pushing him out. He thinks that he misses the feeling of her breath against him before he can realize it’s not a totally platonic thought.

“Now get to work, Bucky McBoing Boing. Surely those sheep-wrangling skills can come in handy.”

The fort is done in ten minutes flat. It’s a little rickety, but the blankets are a canopy over their heads and they even have walls that drape down from the side of Maya’s dresser, so that when they crawl in it’s a bit darker and cozier and warmer. They finish their project like that, and Lucas says nothing about the way that, in the small space, the edge of their hips brush against each other as they lay side by side. He says nothing about the way that, when she pulls the braid out of her hair, a good portion of it lays on the side of Lucas’ shoulder instead of falling against her back. Says nothing about the way that in the small space the smell of her vanilla perfume is ten times heavier, that if he turns his head to the right and leaned a bit his nose could almost brush against her cheek, that he can feel the tune she’s tapping out with her toes vibrating the air beneath him.

When they finally finish, there’s a short celebration, in which Maya hollers Edward’s name at the blanket ceiling and Lucas just sinks his head down in relief. When he lifts it back up, Maya is looking at him.

“See? I told you this wouldn’t be bad.”

“For the record, I told you that. You said you’d rather eat a whole bowl of raw tomatoes than work with a ‘Huckleberry such as myself.’”

She cringes at the tomato part, then smiles. And where he expects a returning quip, she just shakes her head slightly.

“Oh please, you know I didn’t mean that. Honestly. I enjoyed working with you.”

The words seem to real, too fresh, too vulnerable in the air – in the vanilla-scented blanket fort in Maya Hart’s bedroom where Lucas shouldn’t even be in the first place. Everything is sharp in his mind, electrified, and he stares at the smudge of gray on her cheek where the pencil must’ve rubbed near her lips. Her lips, which have ceased smiling, and he thinks he looks at them a bit too closely, studies the outline and the curve and the thought that they must feel as soft as they look.

He’s not sure who leans forward, but he knows one of them does, because next thing he knows he doesn’t see the blanket fort behind her, can’t even see past her, because all that he can make out in front of him is Maya Hart, Maya Hart’s eyes, Maya Hart’s hair, Maya Hart’s little freckles that you can hardly see unless you’re really close, and fuck, he’s really close. He can feel her breath on him again, but this time it’s on his lips, and he feels his eyes closing before he tells them to and his hand is somehow in her hair and-

“Now this right here is a blanket fort!”

Katy’s voice has them pulling apart faster than Lucas thought possible. His head flings back hard enough to give him whiplash, and he throws himself to the far left, crashing into a blanket and promptly destroying the entire fort in all its unplanned glory. Blankets crash around him, and all he feels is heat and cloth and that scent of Maya that’s just everywhere.

“Oh,” he hears Katy say. “Well, not anymore.”

He surfaces from the ocean of blankets hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels. Maya’s already standing up, brushing off her shirt, like she’s trying to rid herself of something, what he doesn’t know. “Yeah, well you know what I say, nothing lasts forever,” Maya answers. She doesn’t sound as shaken as Lucas feels, and he feels jealous for the first time of her air of nonchalance in any and all situations.

“What a philosophy. Lucas, I just got a call from your mom saying you’re due home right about now. Are you two done with the project?”

“Yep, just finished.”

“Totally done.”

They say it at the same time, too reassuring and innocent, and Katy’s eyes narrow the slightest bit.

“Alright then, in that case, you ready to head home?”

Lucas nods, kicking blankets away from his feet. “More than ready, ma’am.”

He grabs his book sack, quickly ties his tennis shoes back on, and is at the door of the apartment in seconds. He pauses to look back at Maya. Her face is unreadable, indifferent, and it almost makes a little part of his stomach sink. “Thanks Maya. See you at school tomorrow.”

“Later Huckleberry.”

And then the door closes, and Lucas takes a taxi back to his house, unable to ignore the pinched feeling in his heart.

…

They present the project the next Monday. They don’t mention the blanket fort, but they get an A, so Lucas counts it as a win. Maya says she has something to show him after school, and Lucas feels an anxious excitement bubbling in his stomach. But it’s not what he expects, and Maya leads him to a shop full of antique paintings – not the real ones of course, but copies you can buy for your house. He doesn’t know why he’s there until she goes to the corner and flips a few paintings over, pulling out one he’s never seen before.

“Recognize it, Huckleberry?”

And he doesn’t, until he sees the woman sitting at the table, and the darkness and lamps outside the window, and-

“That’s Edward’s!” he says, and when did art excite him so much? Maya grins. 

“My padawan is learning,” she says, and before Lucas can say much else, she’s carrying the thing to the check-out counter. Before Lucas realizes he might want to offer to pay (Maya is not one for blatant chivalry, but he does know his family is considerably luckier than hers when it comes to money), Maya’s bought the painting and is walking back outside with it. They are greeted by crisp New York air, and she shoves it into his hands.

“For you. As a reminder that we actually can survive each other’s presence enough to get shit done.”

He laughs, but it feels pressed. “That’s quite sentimental of you,” he comments. She rolls her eyes, and her nose is a bit pink in biting air.

“Yeah yeah, don’t get used to it. I found that money on the sidewalk this morning.”

“Oh, that explains it.”

She shoves him with her shoulder, and he shoves her back, but then he’s stepping away, because her touch feels like fire even through their layers of coats. They stand in silence for a few moments, and just when Lucas thinks he’s gotten up the courage to say something, to mention the never-again-spoken-of blanket fort moment, Maya speaks.

“Well, I gotta get going.”

The words lodge in his throat, the almost confession that he thought he was maybe ready for. He swallows it down. “Yeah, me too.”

“Nice working with you, Friar.”

She holds out her hand for a handshake, and it’s ridiculous and stupid and Maya’s smirking like she knows that, but he grabs her hand anyway. Her mittens are soft, but there’s a small hole in her knuckle, and he feels his thumb rub against the frayed edges and the softness of her skin.

“And you too, Ms. Hart.”

She smiles again, squeezes his hand, and then quite promptly turns around and walks back to her apartment. Her hair billows behind her, her strides short but purposeful, and he waits for a few seconds to see if she will turn around, if she will give him a second glance.

She doesn’t. So he gathers his hands into his coat sleeves and makes the long walk home, the cold outside doing nothing to subdue the burning in his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks and let me know what you think!


End file.
